Impressions from my first guest blogging experience

Nick Taylor is probably the person who has the most to do with me starting blogging in the first place. That's why it makes even more sense my first guest blog post was on his blog, thetwohalves.com. Luckily, he was interested in guest blogging too, since these types of exchange can bring additional exposure and new readers. But we wanted to make something special, something a bit more interesting, so we've agreed on writing a mutual post on the same topic, both publishing on each other's blog. After looking for a proper theme for months, we've finally decided on Occupy Wall Street, something that's very actual these days.

The eye of the beholder

We both approached the situation from our point of view and style. Nick's direction went more into politics. He has just returned to the States after a few years and saw how big the movement was and how differently people perceive it. He justified the importance of Occupy and criticized the problems of the current system. Here's his post: Occupy Wall Street – why it won’t go away and why it matters.

The publishing

It wasn't easy. The logistics of publishing two cross-referenced posts with the same form were quite complex, also because Nick and I are 8 hours apart. It took us hours to make coordinated support and marketing activities on different social media channels, tweeting, retweeting, sharing, liking, plusing, upvoting, stumbling, mentioning, commenting and everything. We also wanted to post the two articles simultaneously, which perhaps wasn't such I good idea, since not all times are appropriate for sharing, and one of us (or both) would perform worse than the other. But it was our first time doing such a thing, and we did have a lot of fun with it.

The results

Actually, the results were nothing out of the ordinary, so I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. We did get a very good amount of interactions on Facebook, since our co-branded post was surely interesting for people who know us both. But nothing special on other platforms. Perhaps this topic is already saturated or the mentioned timing wasn't appropriate, resulting in the visits on both our blogs being quite average. But you have to learn somehow, and we'll just have to try a bit harder the next time.

But who cares about the results. Guest blogging is fun. Even if it takes twice the amount to do it in such a way that we did, I would and will do it again. Perhaps also with other bloggers interested in such a project, or a similar one (if this made you think for a bit, give me a shout). As for Nick - I'm really happy we've finally agreed on something. This world could be a better place, and I hope our effort did help to move it a bit into that direction.